BLOCH, HERBERT

BLOCH, HERBERT (1911– ), U.S. classical scholar. Born in Berlin, Bloch achieved prominence in the fields of Latin epigraphy, paleography, archaeology, Greek and Roman historiography, and medieval Latin literature. He participated in excavations at Ostia, Italy, (1938–39) and then went to the United States, where he was appointed instructor in Greek and Latin at Harvard in 1941 and professor in 1953. He taught there until 1982. While still in Italy, Bloch published the results of his research there on Roman brick stamps, the meager bits of information inscribed on bricks in Roman construction (republished in book form with indices in 1947). He pursued this subject in basic articles in Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, vols. 56–59 (1947–48). This work, with its extremely elaborate indices to the portion of the corpus of Latin inscriptions dealing with brick stamps and with many additional inscriptions of the genre never previously published, has proved to be a mine of information for the study of the great senatorial and equestrian families involved in the building industry. It is also important for the study of Roman history, and especially Roman economic history, providing excellent insights into the history of the decline of the Roman Empire, particularly as evinced by the gradual absorption of one of the most important industries into the hands of the emperors. In addition,   the stamps have proved extremely valuable in dating buildings. Bloch also wrote important monographs on the historians of the 4th century B.C.E., the manuscript tradition of Sallust's Histories, and the pagan revival in the West in the 4th century C.E. He was the editor of Felix Jacoby's collected essays on Greek historiography (1956) and completed a work in three volumes, Monte Cassino in the Middle Ages (1986), on one of the most significant intellectual centers of the Middle Ages, which he studied for 30 years. It was awarded the Praemium Urbis in Rome in 1987 and the Haskins Medal of the Medieval Academy in 1988. While on leave from Harvard, Bloch was professor in charge of the School of Classical Studies of the American Academy in Rome (1957–59), and from 1964 he held the positions of senior fellow of the Society of Fellows at Harvard (1964–79) and trustee of the Loeb Classical Library (1964–73). Bloch was president of the American Philological Association (1968/69) and president of Fellows of the Medieval Academy (1990–93). He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the Pontificia Accademia Romana di Archeologia (an honorary member since 1990), the German Archaeological Institute, the Zentraldirektion of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica. In 1989 he was awarded an L.L.D. by the University of Cassino, and in 1999 he received the Cultori di Roma prize. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: Who's Who in America (1972–73), 1, 288 (Louis Harry Feldman / Ruth Beloff (2nd ed.)